Obviously it's relatively early days for the recently installed President of the International Olympic Committee, but Mr Bach is already on his mettle as far as the impending Sochi Games are concerned.

His wily assurance that athletes would naturally be free to express themselves during post-competition press conferences drew what looked and sounded like a flat denial from the organisers, only for the matter to be resolved when the organisers insisted that their flat denial had been misunderstood. Or was it "taken out of context"?

Whatever, freedom of expression will Rule OK in press conferences, which is good news for all the media representatives now gathered in the seething Black Sea resort and busying themselves with pre-Games reports featuring, among other things, the uncomfortably companionable toilet arrangements in the biathlon venue. Perhaps this is some kind of complement to the biathlon, given that it will require those seating themselves in the gents to offer the combined skill of making polite conversation while doing what they arrived to do.

Toilet arrangements at the biathlon and other venues are promising to earn Sochi the reputation of being the Friendly Games ©Steve Rosenberg/BBC

Naturally, many reporters have focused on the massive security presence all around them, above them and, for all we know, underneath them - although that story has yet to surface.

If pre-Games rhetoric was an Olympic event - well it is, really - and was scored, say, under the system which used to hold sway in figure skating, then Bach would surely be looking at a perfect 6 for his freedom-of-speech effort, although perhaps only a 5.5 for his most recent sally against those world leaders, invited or uninvited, who have decided to make a point of not attending the Sochi Games, which is being widely taken as a judgement upon the controversy over gay rights and the new Russian law which has flared in the space of the past year.

US President Barack Obama is among many world leaders "boycotting" the Sochi Games, with implied criticism of Russia's stance regarding gay rights ©AFP/Getty Images

Bach has a point when he asks politicians not to visit their disagreements "on the backs of the athletes" at the Games. But after all, it is only the politicians who are boycotting, not their athletes, as was the case in the 1980 and 1984 Games. Some might see even this as a positive thing...

These successes, however, are as rhetorical double salchows to the triple lutz which lies ahead in the President's programme - that is, characterising the Games.

IOC President Thomas Bach addressing the Session in Sochi this week
©AFP/Getty images

Already, surely, the President will have potential statements prepared for the Closing Ceremony, at which, custom has so often dictated, the latest Olympics will have to be labelled the "most something", or perhaps the "something-est" in history. The 64 billion rouble question is: what will the "something" be?

The Sochi Games could already be called the most expensive Games given their most popularised figure of $31 billion  (although just to make things confusing, last year's estimate of $51 billion, offered by the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak has since been dramatically downgraded to $6.4 billion, which officials say is the true figure minus costs for improved transport links and other infrastructure). But such a truth is not what the host nation will be looking for on this occasion. Most compact Games? Again, true, but not the answer. Most heavily fortified Games (move over, Salt Lake City...)? Same goes.

Maybe the President will have to fall back on the diplomacy of "truly exceptional", the epithet given by his predecessor, Jacques Rogge, to the 2008 Beijing Olympics - Games which, incidentally, Rogge's predecessor Juan-Antonio Samaranch proclaimed as "the best I have ever seen."

Perhaps Rogge was remembering 1996 Atlanta Games, when the organisational travails, and indeed the bombing which resulted in two deaths and more than a hundred injuries, moderated even Samaranch to the observation that they had been "most exceptional".

The Closing Ceremony of the 1996 Atlanta Games which, beset by organisational problems and a fatal bomb blast, were described merely as "most exceptional" by the then IOC President Juan-Antonio Samaranch ©Getty Images

What is devoutly to be wished, of course, is that Thomas Bach will be able to declare that the Sochi 2014 Games have been "the greatest ever".

They might yet be, we will soon see - although for many people the background to these Games, with the serial allegations of corruption, the crudely and one senses temporarily ameliorated attitude to gay rights, and the real and present danger of terrorist attacks, has already characterised the Sochi Winter Games adversely.

However things turn out once the 22nd Winter Games are officially underway, the latest version is already a world away from the two which preceded it in Vancouver and Turin. There will be nothing ad hoc or carefree about these Games.

What can be said of them, unequivocally, is that they are a supreme expression of willpower - the will of President Putin, and by extension the nation over which he presides. Every sporting element of these Games has been created from scratch. The expense is matched only by the ambition and confidence of the enterprise.

That much was evident when I was one of the journalists invited to Sochi for the World Press Briefing in November 2012 and was taken on a two-day whistle-stop tour of the alpine and coastal venues.

On day one, our coach travelled past solid lines of lorries, diggers, cement mixers and mini-buses full of construction workers heading for the mountain ranges behind us, their wheels throwing up dust into the mountain air. The dust was flying too when we reached our destination just a few hundred metres away from the rolling, olive green water of the Black Sea. More lines of lorries. More mini-buses. More frenetic activity. It went on all day. It went on all night. It went on come rain. It went on come shine.

One of the workers who helped turn Sochi into 'the biggest building site in the world' in preparation for the 2014 Winter Games ©AFP/Getty Images

In his address to the gathered journalists Dmitry Chernyshenko, President and chief executive of Sochi 2014, described the locale as "probably the biggest building site in the world."

Tellingly, he added: "Every Games should surpass the previous edition - should be better, more efficient." And there you have it. The Russians have not gone to all this trouble merely to create a successful Games. It has to be a transcendent Games.

Dmitriy Chernyshenko, President and chief executive of Sochi 2014, has voiced Russia's towering ambitions well ahead of the Opening Ceremony ©AFP/Getty Images

And that, of course, holds true for tomorrow's centrepiece in the Fisht (short for Finisht) Olympic Stadium. "We've got an ambitious job to create the most outstanding Opening Ceremony ever," Chernyshenko asserted.

Such is the fearsome level of expectation with which IOC Presidents now have to contend. Good luck with it all, Mr Bach!

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.